27 Pro Death Penalty Quotes by Victims' Families

Tuesday 12 April 2011 - IN A small, sparsely-furnished apartment in the suburbs of Taipei, Mrs Chou Chang Chan's hands shake as she holds a picture of a sharply-dressed young man - her son, who was brutally murdered at age 32.

Two men were sentenced to death last year for stabbing him in an attempted burglary. If there is one thing his mother and her ailing husband hope to live to see, it is the sentences being carried out.

'We're in our eighties now. We don't know when we'll die but we're only willing to go once we've seen the execution. The government should return justice to the family,' she said.

In her small apartment, Chou Chang-chan hopes her son's killers will be executed soon. A new moratorium is unthinkable to her, as is the idea of the killers serving life sentences.

"We can't keep bad people around, people would be frightened to death. If they are released, they will kill again," she said.

Taiwan has 40 prisoners on death row. The date of their executions is yet to be announced.

"Regardless of which government is in power, the crime situation is getting worse, not better. It takes someone with testicular fortitude to implement the death penalty. Once you stand up for the right things, changes will occur. We, the law-abiding citizens, are the ones who live with burglar-proofing all around, but the criminals roam free. They are laughing at us. The criminals have a blatant disregard for the law."

Dennis Ramjattan said while human rights activists might object to the death penalty, the rights of the victims ought to also be considered. "What about the rights of the victims? Do they have rights as well? My mother didn't deserve to die like this," he said. "My mother never got into any trouble with the law, never even a parking violation. I would like them (the Government) to stop talking and put their money where their mouths are. They said crime was number one on their agenda when they spoke before elections. But what we need is less lip service and more action before anything can change."

Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption founding chair Dante Jimenez and Lauro Vizconde, whose wife and two daughters were stabbed dead in 1991, Wednesday visited Venson Evangelista’s wake and offered their sympathies to the grieving family.

Vizconde, who recently lost an appeal to reverse the acquittal of the accused in his family’s murders, hugged the father and whispered words of comfort.

Vizconde said criminals had nothing to fear because they knew they could get away unpunished.

“Once the death penalty is restored, criminals will think twice before committing a crime,” he said.

Tuesday 2 October 2012 - “Give him the maximum sentence, the death sentence if possible,” Tauri said at the South Jakarta district police station. “He should at least serve a lifetime because he took my son’s life.”

Tauri refused to comment on whether the suspect’s family would apologize.

“[I’m] still unstable,” Tauri said. “[My mood] is still changing. How would you feel if your son died like that?”

Tauri said that he has let go of his son, but he still wanted justice to be served and wants the perpetrator to receive the maximum punishment.

“I have let go because if I don’t, his [soul] will suffer. That’s how it is in Islam,” he said. “But regarding the punishment, we want him to receive maximum punishment.”

Saturday 12 November 2011 - He said criminals like the one who sexually abused, strangled and hacked her daughter to death on November 8 have no right to live.

“I want the death sentence to be restored what they did to my daughter was not a doing of a normal man, but of the devil. The criminal should be hanged; he must not be given a chance to reproduce. He will only breed criminals like him,” the father said in vernacular. 

Monday 31 December 2012 - The family of a murdered Indian gang-rape victim will not rest until her killers are hanged, her brother has said in an interview.

"The fight has just begun. We want all the accused hanged, and we will fight for that, till the end," the brother told the Indian Express.

Thursday 3 January 2013 - The father and the brother of the victim – who cannot be named – told the Daily Telegraph that the youngest attacker was the most vicious participant in the assault and deserved to die for his alleged crimes.

"All six should be hanged especially the juvenile who was the most brutal," the 53-year-old father said. "If the law has to be changed to enable that then so be it."

The family of Delhi gang rape victim on Friday 25 January 2013, said it would not want anything less than death sentence for all the accused, including the minor, and urged the central government to amend the law in this connection.

The offer of a government job to one in the family by Delhi government was turned down by the victim's brother.

"The family would never accept that the person who played a major role in the crime is let off with a mere punishment of three years only because he has the excuse that he is a minor," the grandfather of the 23-year-old victim said.

"I came to the court this morning to see what happens. I knew justice would be served. We are happy but not completely happy. The 11 who were killed were first held captive in a room and brutally murdered, one by one. We cannot even imagine the agony they went through. My mother, who cries every day, says that at least 11 should be sentenced to death. We will take the fight to a higher court so that the convicts never get any breather." 

"I'm for the reimposition of the death penalty as a deterrent." Arsenio told reporters at the cremation of the cadaver of Venson at the St. Peter's Chapel in Quezon City on Saturday 22 January 2011.

Monday 30 May 2011 - “I felt very happy after hearing that President Pratibha Patil had rejected his plea for mercy. Such capital punishment will send a message that criminals are bound to face punishment in our country. It will restrain criminals from committing crimes,” Amal, Hara Kanta’s elder son, said today.

Tuesday 6 September 2011 - CHENNAI: Around 500 Youth Congress activists led by state unit president M Yuvaraj courted arrest before the Gandhi statue on the Marina Beach in Chennai on Tuesday demanding withdrawal of the state assembly resolution which has recommended that President Pratibha Patil commute the death sentence of three convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case to life terms.

Among those held were the son and wife of a Congress leader who was killed along with Rajiv Gandhi in the suicidal blast by an LTTE team at Sriperumbudur in Kancheepuram district in May 1991.

More than a thousand Youth Congress activists gathered at the spot to express their condemnation of the assembly resolution passed on August 30 by the House.

"We demand nothing less than death penalty for the convicts Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan as they played roles in the heinous murder of our leader Rajiv Gandhi," Yuvaraj said adding, "the chief minister Jayalalithaa has to answer why her party moved the resolution without considering the traumatic bereavement suffered by 15 families following the blast."

Angry over the vociferous campaign in favour of commuting the death penalty awarded to three convicts for their role in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the family members of those who died along with the former prime minister have decided to go on a similar path of agitation to ensure that the punishment given by the apex court is executed.

On that May 21, 1991, night when a suicide bomber assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, 15 others in the vicinity lost their lives. They have kept silent for years as the case trudged forward, and have been rarely written about.

But now, with the Tamil Nadu Assembly joining the appeals to commute the death sentence to convicts V Sriharan alias Murugan, T Suthentharajan alias Santhan, and A G Perarivelan alias Arivu — a campaign they feel is politically motivated — they have decided to come forward.

The son of one of the victims and some Congress workers undertook a march in Chennai on Tuesday demanding that the men be hanged, while on Friday, a one-day fast will be held in which many more leaders and relatives of at least seven affected families are expected to take part.

“The politicians who are campaigning for their freedom say these three are Tamils. But so were the ones who were killed along with Rajiv. Justice is absolute, there is no space for regionalism or nationalism,” says Javid Iqbal, son of T K S Mohammed Iqbal, the superintendent of police who was killed in the blast.

Javid had just completed his Class X exams when his father died. “We received a call a little past 10 pm informing us that an explosion had occurred but were assured that my father had sustained only injuries, only to find his lifeless body at the Government Hospital in Sriperumbudur. From then on, life changed drastically; it became miserable for all of us, particularly my mother who is yet to come out of the trauma of losing him all of a sudden,” Javid says.

Like him, Balasaraswati, whose husband Rajaguru was among the dead, is yet to reconcile to the loss. “They should be hanged for the crime they committed, for the sufferings we underwent for two decades since that night. Our children were very young when the incident happened, and his salary as a police inspector was the only source of income for the family. We have struggled to make ends meet ever since, depending on the little money that we received as pension,” she says, speaking to The Indian Express from her native Thirunelveli district.

Settled on the outskirts of Chennai, Balasaraswati had gone to Thirunelveli prior to Rajiv’s visit to Sriperumbudur as part of the Lok Sabha election campaign. On May 21, she was on her way back when the train she was travelling in was stopped near Vridhachalam as news about the blast spread across the state. “At that point of time, I didn’t panic as I thought he being only an inspector would be quite away from the VIP and thus the blast site. But I was wrong; I found it out in the newspapers the next morning. My husband was also killed, leaving behind me and two small children,” she recalls. Her son is now a sub-inspector with the Tamil Nadu Police.

Also among those who lost their lives that night was veteran Congress member ‘League’ Munusamy, a 62-year-old former freedom fighter and member of the erstwhile Legislative Council. “That the incident happened 20 years ago is not a valid reason to forget the seriousness of the crime. This is not a usual case of murder out of rage or emotions. It was a planned murder of a former prime minister that should be viewed as a special case. And the punishment was awarded by the trial court and was confirmed by the Supreme Court. If it is not executed, it will only create a wrong precedent where justice is subverted by emotions,” says his son ‘League’ M Mohan, currently a PCC member, who was part of the march on Tuesday seeking that the convicts get their due punishment.